The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1887-04-18
MILLINER'S ROW.
Shops which Have Held Their Ground
for Two Generations.

Shops which Have Held Their Ground
for Two Generations.
New YORK, April 16-Not one of the
grand DANES whose Easter bonnets and
gowns, as they appeared ON Fifth and Madi-
spring, last Sunday, as the balmy breezes
and blooming crocuses. bought her outfit in
Division street. Probably not one in ten
thousand was ever in Division street, knows
where it is or ever heard of the twenty eight
millinery shops that stand there all in a row,
and stood there years before most of the
ladies in fashionable society in New York
were born
Fifty years ago tradesmen in this city
dealing in the same lines of goods were more
gregarious than to-day. Not only We're the
leather men all in THE Swamp" as now,
but the hatters and flrriers We're all in a
row on the lower end of Broadway: the
largest dry goods establishments We're on the
same thoroughfare in the neighborhood of
Cedar and Pine streets, although there were
one or two very large stores on CathaIne
street Among the shops that dealt in gen
tlemen's and ladies' furnishing goods and
milliners were on Division street The
Madison square Of that day was Chatham
square; the Fifth avenue was on East Broad
way, with some of the stately residences of
the merchant prince on Pike, Madison and
nelghborlng streets, and the Harlem lane
was the Bowery.
The advance III rents scattered the matters
and furriers many years ago The great
dry goods stores followed their customers up
town. The Catharine street shops went into
Grand street. Chatham square was given
up to manufactures, gin mills, beer gar
denS, concert saloons and low dives. The
substantial residences on East Broadway
nPIUnDO1'InOr fl.Sth irfr
houses and then began to swarm with He
brews. But the millinery shops still stood
there in a row on Division street, between
thirty and forty of them.
The prim and precise old Quakers who
lived on the opposite (west) side Of the
street, who owned most of the property
there and whose wives kept some of the mil
linery shops, have disappeared. You might
elbow your way up and down the narrow
dark, dirty street. from which the light is
shut out by the Second avenue elevated
railroad, with its eternal clatter, every day
for year and not meet with carefully
brushed, broad-brim silk hat, snuff-colored.
shad-bellied coat, or pair of knee breeches,
or see the delicat, drab gown, sugar-scoop
bonnet and spOtlesS white kerchief of the
Quakers wife. But the millinery shops re-
main, the most of them, as though they
were permanent fixtures attached to the
soil
When the wealth and fashion of New
York surrendered East Broadway to the
boarding house keepers, the milliners who
made their artistic hats and bonnets fol-
lowed them uptown; but another grade of
architects of wOmens headgear stood ready
to move in with a cheaper though no less
snowy stock. They, too, had their day, to
be succeeded in turn by the present genera
ton of Jewish nlilliners, when their country
men crowded out of the neighborhood the
respectable boarding houses. And SO we
have the strange spectacle, for New York,
of line of business clinging to the spot
where it was planted two generations ago,
adapting itself from year to year to the
changed surroundings, until a complete
revolution has been wrought
But the elevated railroad has probably
sealed the doom of the Division street mil
linery trade Gaps have begun to appear
in the hitherto unbroken row, and the "To
Let" card is now to be seen in several win
dows Twenty eight only now remain
where few years ago there were about
thirty-five, and no new ones move into the
places of those who have gone to Grand and
other streets. z. L. WHITE